Реферат: Synopsis For The Once And Future King
trappings of nearly three centuries of history between 1216 and 1485, then the concept is
easier to deal with. By a sort of accordion process the low points are dropped from
consideration, and the high points are made to seem closer together:
In the smoky vaults, where once the grubby barons had gnawed their bones with
bloody fingers, now there were people eating with clean fingers, which they had
washed with herb-scented toilet soap out of wooden bowls.
This sort of advance in table manners took much longer indeed than the few years of
Arthur’s reign and yet by compressing those years into “an hourglass” White succeeds
in his effort to picture Arthur as civilization’s champion. Besides, washing hands before
meals is pretty frequently mentioned in the High Middle Ages; with Arthur living
1216-1485, there’s plenty of time for the custom to take root! A glance at White’s Malory
essay in his journals reveals immediately the sensitivity which White showed to both
what he believed Malory to be doing and what he himself was planning to do to Malory.
In the event, of course, White did indeed follow his careful plan about anachronisms in
many places: in the descriptive passages about castles (Sir Ector’s, pp. 36-38; Morgause’s,
pp. 280-81; Lancelot’s, pp. 621-22), each of which is built in the architectural style of a
different century, and in the splendid panoramas of medieval life (pp. 442-47; 539-49;
559-569) which comprehends centuries of history. White usually stays within the
1216-1485 limits, but he occasionally drops back to take advantage of the years
1066-1216, or even earlier: the description of the Out Isles is one exception of this kind.
But in retrospect it is not the glory of these scenes which captures the imagination. Rather
it is the riotous mishmash of Merlyn’s backward thinking, and his beagling trousers, his
walking mustard-pot, Sir Ector’s gruff nineteenth-century colloquialisms and Palomides’s
Babu English that hold one’s heart in thrall.
Kurth Sprague, 26 December 1996